Customer Reviews

Faces of Layla, A Journey Through Ethiopian Adoption

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What is life like in an African orphanage? Put your Charles Dickens stereotypes away. Layla House, an orphanage in Ethiopia, is a hopeful, clean and loving place. It is a way station for children who have lived through unspeakable hardship (losing their parents in the AIDS epidemic sweeping the continent), a place of comfort and support where they can heal and wait to join a new family in America. Emma Dodge Hanson's photos of the children's lives are masterful and the text tells the moving story of some individual children, thus putting faces and personalities in place of the grim statistics. My own Ethiopian daughter spent time at Layla House and I can attest to the high standard of care but also the true affection given the children who live there.

Each child at Layla House dreams of a new family but for now, while they wait, they are like children everywhere--joyful, spirited and affectionate. They want to be doctors and nurses but also airplane pilots and motorcycle drivers. This is a great book for anyone interested in Africa, in children and in adoption---it just might help realize a few more of these children's dreams.

By the way, all proceeds from the sale of the book goes to a fund that helps find families for the hardest-to-place children.

I would recommend this book to anyone, but in particular it is a must-have for those who are even remotely connected to Ethiopian adoption. We are currently waiting to bring home our two children (who are currently at Layla), and what I love about this book is that it makes our adoption seem very real to our friends and family members who previously showed little interest in, or understanding of, our adoption. I've had more than one person slowly flip through the book without saying a word, and then hand it back to me with tears in their eyes as Ethiopia, and the children at the orphanage, suddenly become very real to them. Ethiopia can seem very far away, and the concept of millions of orphaned children very abstract, to those of us in the Western world. The photos and narration of this book draw the reader closer to these resilient children who remain hopeful for their futures despite the tragedies that they have faced.

As a previous commenter noted, all of the proceeds from the book go directly towards a fund that makes adoption possible for the children who have been waiting the longest for a family.

A stunningly vibrant book. Each photograph tells its own story. It is a book you will open again and again.

I was thrilled to be able to give this book to my Ethiopian-born daughters for Christmas. The book is beautifully done. There is a hilarious forward by Melissa Fay Greene, who wrote the bookThere Is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Her Country's Children. Along with pictures of the staff and children at Layla, there are street scenes in Ethiopia, and some thoughtful commentary here and there.

The book is especially precious to me because two of my daughters were living at Layla House at the time the photos were taken. I spotted their faces in several places in this gorgeous book, and they were thrilled to see many photos of dearly loved friends. Though the book is personally interesting to us, any family adopting from Ethiopia would be interested in the views of Ethiopia that this book shares.

The proceeds from this book go to the GRACE FUND, a fund dedicated to giving grants to families adopting older children who have waited a long time for families. Not everyone is able to adopt older children, but I truly believe that we all can help get kids into families where they belong, thanks in part to wonderful projects like this.

Faces of Layla combines extraordinary photography with thought-provoking words. The chapter headings by Jennifer Armstrong expertly and succinctly prepare us for the vibrant and far more upbeat than you'd expect reality of a third-world orphanage while Melissa Fay Greene's introduction offers a thoroughly candid and intimate view of what it feels like to adopt a child -- frightening, beatific, always surprising. Emma Dodge Hanson's photographs redress the decades of images that reduce orphans from poor countries to objects of pity to reveal that these children are like kids everywhere: hopeful, wildly energetic, sometimes sad, and unfailingly beautiful through the sheer life-force of their young selves. When I look at a group of kids listening with real attention to their teacher or breaking into wild laughter on the playground, I understand much more about their proximity to us than their distance from us--Faces of Layla is a moving and human book that closes the gap between seemingly distant realities and offers the chance, rare enough in life as in art, to make a true connection.

We have two daughters from Ethiopia, and though they are not from Layla House, they were adopted through Adoption Advocates International. This is a beautiful book and I would highly recommend it to anyone!